Re: THEORY: Irish, and language death

>>I would respectfully have to disagree. Here is what Robert D. King has
to say about Irish in the Linguistic Prolegomena to his study of the
language politics of India:

"Earlier, before the 18th century, most inhabitants of Ireland spoke
Irish.  Sometime between 1750 and 1850 a wholesale transfer to English,
the language of the island's rulers, began.  By 1851, when the first
census to take language into account was held, only some 5% of the
population described themselves as monolingual Irish speakers; 23 per cent
said they were bilingual in Irish and English." (p. 32, "Nehru and the
Language Politics of India")

That would seem to put it right around 1800. The reason is quite
straightforward: it is only with the extremest rarity that a government
policy is ever able substantially to change linguistic behavior; it
usually requires physically pointing a gun at someone's head before they
will willingly change. The language reforms under Atatürk in Turkey are
the usually cited example, but many more could be produced. Almost always,
short of genocide, the impetus behind language death is economic motive to
improve one's every-day well-being.<<

I don't dispute that. The language restrictions placed on the Irish people
by the British quite possibly restricted monolingual Irish speakers
economically, though.

>>Equally, language revitalization programs almost always fail, because
the people meant to "reacquire" (i.e., acquire for the first time) their
ancestral tongue usually have a much easier alternative available which
will work for all their daily needs. In the case of the Irish, it was
English. Hebrew is an exception to the general trend, and it is (to
oversimply somewhat) a result of having no one other language which all
Jews in Palestine could easily pick up without going to great lengths
(though note that it is in many ways a new language, not at all like that
of King David).<<

Again, I can't argue against this. My only point, really, was that Ireland
began its downhill journey of losing its native tongue earlier than 1800,
both because of government policies. I also said that the main loss of
Irish speakers came from the Potato Famine, from death or emmigration. In
the case of emmigration, their language loss most definitely came from
economic factors, as they emmigrated to English-speaking countries. (Of
course, that was assuming they could actually get a job.)

Noelle

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